Folks are trying to repeal the Zumbro's catch and release regulation that has been installed for 12 miles of water below Lake Zumbro. A legislator has authored a bill that would remove the special regulation. Interestingly, the entire stretch in question is included on the draft 2006 impaired waters list, due to excessive mercury and/or PCB levels: fish maybe not safe to eat... A subsegment of the stretch is also listed for fecal pathogens: probably unsafe to wade in many cases. It should be noted that these listings indicate that there's enough data to document these problems, but they may or may not be much worse than surrounding waters that have yet to be examined. As depicted in this map, the green stretch is the proposed mercury/PCB listing and the red stretch is the proposed mercury/PCB and fecal pathogen listing. The black line indicates the approximate end of the 12 mile special regulation stretch (the start is the outfall of Lake Zumbro - seen here as a yellow polygon).
For discussion, go here: http://ontheflyguiding.proboards59.com/index.cgi?board=conservationenvironment&action=display&thread=1142609981